EFF challenges telecom immunity
p2pnet news view | Freedom:- The fox is in charge of the hen house, letting US attorney general Michael Mukasey decide whether or not telecoms such as AT&T can be sued for taking part in the Bush government’s illegal warrantless surveillance.
That’s the view of senior EFF staff attorney Kevin Bankston.
“The Attorney General should not be allowed to unconstitutionally play judge and jury in these cases, which affect the privacy of millions of Americans,” he says.
With that in mind, the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) is now challenging the constitutionality of the law aimed at granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies which were active in George W. Bush’s “illegal domestic wiretapping program,” it says.
The EFF argues the flawed FISA Amendments Act (FAA), “violates the federal government’s separation of powers as established in the Constitution and robs innocent telecom customers of their rights without due process of law”.
Signed into law earlier this year, “the FAA allows for the dismissal of the lawsuits over the telecoms’ participation in the warrantless surveillance program if the government secretly certifies to the court that either the surveillance did not occur, was legal, or was authorized by the president,” says the foundation.
In the public version of his certification to the court, filed last month, Mukasey claimed the government had no “content-dragnet” program that searched for keywords in the body of communications.
But he didn’t deny the “dragnet acquisition” of the content of communications, states the EFF, which says it handed the court, “a summary of thousands of pages of documents demonstrating the broad dragnet surveillance of millions of innocent Americans’ communications.”
This comprised eight volumes of exhibits, including eyewitness accounts and testimony under oath.
“We have overwhelming record evidence that the domestic spying program is operating far outside the bounds of the law,” adds EFF senior staff attorney Kurt Opsahl.
The constitutional challenge is set to be heard on December 2.
EFF – EFF Challenges Constitutionality of Telecom Immunity in Federal Court, October 17, 2008
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